


Perfect Enough

by SharkyIsSnarky



Series: We Are Our Choices (Not Our Fears) [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Teacher Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 12:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19974004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharkyIsSnarky/pseuds/SharkyIsSnarky
Summary: Ginny is a woman of action, and while they might still be young, she knows that what she wants is a way to tell the world she and Harry belong to each other.





	Perfect Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is just me being a dweeb. I like fluff and I was not kidding when I said I'd rewrite the entire epilogue. Fight me JKR, teacher Harry is my lifeblood.

Ginny was a woman of action. She grew up the youngest of seven and patience had been a hard but important lesson. Patience did not mean passiveness however.

Ron gave her a wide and knowing grin across the table where they were working out how best to decorate for his upcoming wedding. The first of January, 2000. Hermione felt it was a once in a lifetime chance, Ron felt it symbolized new beginnings. Everyone else in the family thought they were being a touch pretentious but went along with minimal complaint.

"You're only 17 Ginny."

She sneered back over fabric samples that shimmered a light blue and lilac. Hermione was indifferent, it was all set dressing to her when compared to the significance of the event, and if Ron hadn't been stopped the entire event would have run with military precision and planning but still be draped in unforgivable Chudley Cannon orange. "And you're only 19."

"So? You and Harry are solid, you don't need to rush this. We're just taking the opportunity presented to us!"

"Git. Are you sure it has to be outside?"

"George rigged up an open tent that keeps you nice and comfy, even has a replica of the great Hall ceiling charm."

"That's impressive, could even turn a profit… but Weasely's Wizard Event Supplies doesn't quite sound right."

"No it does not." Ron replied and made a notation on the seating chart. The early summer morning was warm through the open window of his flat in Woolwich and the tea was too hot to sip companionably yet. It was odd, how quiet his new place in the world seemed despite it's proximity to London. Ron was working to join the aurors when he wasn't helping George balance books at the shop, and on weekends Hermione joined him in bouncing between the Burrow and the long neglected Potter Estate now that Harry finally had access to it.

Ginny would not have expected him to have much time to make this place feel like his, but it was her brother all over. Small and comfortable, draped in red and gold, with little knickknacks spread between the copious amount of plants he'd picked up. The chess set he loved so dearly was waiting on the coffee table to begin again.

"I think he might propose soon." Ginny blurted into the companionable silence. Ron groaned. 

"Ginny, can't you wait to steal our thunder until _after_ I'm married to the love of my life?" Their discussion was cut short by Hermione's patronus bounding into the room, announcing she was headed over in a few minutes and if Ron could please pour her some water she would be thankful. The subject was abandoned in favor of beginning lunch preparation.

  


The next time it came up was when Luna was wandering with her through Diagon Alley and Ginny lingered a bit too long staring at the dress robes in thin lace and dainty colors, all the things a professional chaser and a war hero normally didn't have, it just wasn't practical.

But it was beautiful

"I think you'd look lovely." Luna said. Ginny started, and it was embarrassing how engrossed she had been watching the lace sway in the fluttering breeze the robes had been charmed with. "You'd be a bride so pretty I'm sure you'd outshine even a herd of heliopaths."

"No undiscovered creatures at my fictional wedding." Ginny said, trying to hide her blush. 

"If you insist." Luna gave a serene little grin and Ginny was glad Luna didn't have it in her to tease anyone.

That November had an early snow blow through when Harry had convinced her to join him at the three Broomsticks. It was ostensibly a simple lunch but Ginny rather felt it was to reassure him he wasn't dreaming after a strange but happy interview with McGonagall. 

"Youngest professor in years." She mused, stealing a fork full of his roast beef. It was a testament to how distracted he was if he didn't try to at least pretend and stop her. Ginny sighed and shoved her shepard's pie across the table and got up to squeeze onto the bench beside him.

"It's just that I was thinking for so long about being an Auror, Gin." He quietly sought out her hand and she gave it, leaning into his shoulder for good measure to ground him. He was wearing one of her mum's jumpers and it already smelled like him, not that she was complaining. "And I feel like I should miss the idea, but I want this more than I thought."

"What made you change your mind?"

"I just wondered, what would have happened if there were a teacher like Lupin there all the time?" He squeezed her hand. "Could more people have lived?"

"Harry-"

"I know." He kissed the top of her head. "I just want to find the answer to my own question, not be the answer to someone else's question."

Ginny elbowed him gently in the ribs before sitting up to brush a kiss onto his cheek. "Awfully serious today aren't you?"

"Is that a good thing?" There was his smile, coming out like the sun.

"Sometimes, but I like you, silly or serious."

"Then I have to ask you a very serious question." At that Ginny's breath stuttered in her throat and she looked up at Harry with wide eyes. Harry's grin widened and some part of her was screaming that they were on the edge of some grand precipice.

"Will you do me the honor of accompanying me to your brother's wedding?" If he were any less charming about it Ginny might have been angry. 

"Of course!" She said with a grin to hide the slight disappointment. After all, who wanted to get engaged in the Three Broomsticks anyways?

  
  
  


Ron and Hermione were married with fanfare and merriment, and the less Ginny thought about the envy in her gut and more about the smiling faces of everyone there the better.

  
  


After that it was when Harry had enlisted half of their cohort to celebrate finally clearing Potter Manor the next spring. He had taken his time sweeping out dust and debris, doing the lengthy repairs by hand, and finally asking her help to add the glorious last dash of paint to spruce up the more modern kitchen he'd wanted. Ginny spent the entire process trying very hard not to envision that she might one day live here as well (somehow ignoring the way half her clothing was already in his wardrobe and her favorite books on his shelves) and simply enjoy the lawn full of people she'd once feared could all be taken from her. Hagrid was holding a sleeping Teddy Lupin, whose boundless toddler energy was no match for the late hour, when he settled next to her.

"All right there Ginny?" He asked in his quietest boom. Teddy, long used to this, didn't even budge in his rest save to smear what looked to be chocolate onto Hagrid's coat. Fang, old and dutiful, ambled over to lay against her knees on the grass.

"Just thinking."

"Ah, serious thoughts? If yer not against it I'm plenty good at hearing people out." Ginny blinked. Hagrid, for all his kindness, had ever been Harry, Ron, and Hermione's friend. Hagrid just chuckled and scratched Fang behind the ears. "I had to hear Ron out plenty o' times."

"It's nothing bad," Ginny hedged, trying not to pick at the grass Harry had been so excited to see growing and instead rested them tight against her abdomen to resist "Just thinking on things to come."

"Ginny!" Hagrid said with no small amount of shock. "Are- when? Congratulations!" He crushed her tight against him, waking a rather fussy Teddy who immediately began to demand his freedom. "I thought Hermione and Ron would be the first with a little tyke but-!"

"What? No!" Ginny yelped as Teddy escaped and began to bother Fang who bore the treatment with dignity. "I mean not no forever but not right now!" She fell back into the grass with a frustrated groan. "I'm just waiting, and I'm sick of waiting. Not sick of Harry but I just want this to be official so it's not eating at me."

"Ah." Hagrid said, his face visibly red even behind the massive beard while he recovered. "Well you all seem a bit young but with what you all lived through it's not much o' a shock. I'm terrible sorry Ginny, I made a fool of meself didn't I?"

"Forgiven and forgotten." She waved a hand imperiously from her bed of grass. "I'm at the point I might just propose to him instead."

"That'd be a sight." Hagrid said with an awkward chuckle as they moved onto safer topics of conversation.

  
  
  
  


That same night Harry took joy in giving her what he called the "grand tour" of this place she had already seen multiple times after he began to restore it. But this time felt different. Their friends had returned home save for Dean Thomas who was sleeping off some firewhiskey in a spare room for the night and Teddy, who Andromeda had left there for the weekend. 

Like this they walked through rooms panelled in oak with a forest of carvings that traveled with you, she felt the carpet between her toes as they moved through the moonlit living room like children out past curfew. Photos had come pouring in since the war ended and she waved at Harry's mother as they passed her frame, Lilly grinning and waving back wildly while a portrait of Harry's grandparents snored quietly nearby.

They both snickered as they sounded out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on creaking floorboards in the study and Ginny didn't ask why the cupboard below the staircase had no door but was full of blankets and soft floating lights. Finally upstairs Harry kissed her softly at the top of the steps, quiet and steady.

"I hope you don't mind I gave Teddy his own room."

"Why would I mind?" She whispered back in confusion. 

"I was hoping you'd live here too. Someday that is."

"Oh Harry." He was looking right at her with hope and fear, like he instinctually expected a no and his heart and mind were begging her to prove that small scared part of him wrong. "He's here to stay, whenever he likes. He's family."

Harry grinned at her like she had hung the moon and Ginny wanted to show him that in her heart was a missing puzzle piece in the shape of his smile. He had been though so much, both of them had, and if she had the power to do so this would be the happiest ending she could ever give him. She wanted it all, the house of laughter, the lazy mornings and wedding bands to remind them on bad days that she was his and he was hers, perhaps some yet blurry and distant child to follow Teddy around.

But this was not the time for that, she thought as Harry picked her up at the waist and she stifled a shriek of glee against his lips, now was the time to just be.

  


Small moments bubbled up, breakfast together and late nights, the way Harry sometimes reached for his pocket, or how he always seemed to stop himself from saying something without thinking when her team finished a match. It was unspoken, but they both knew. It all came to a head when Harry was organizing his office in Hogwarts with a grin that summer and Ginny came by to drag him to the lake for a picnic. The season would pick up soon and classes were a month away. And Ginny was damn well going to do something about it.

She had pumpkin juice and sandwiches, already cut fruits and crisps in the ever-light basket her grandmother had passed down to her own mother. Naturally Ginny hadn't breathed a word of it to her mum and simply took the basket, apparated to the gates, and clattered up the stairs. She passed several familiar paintings and one excited Peeves to where the erstwhile DADA classroom rested. She opened the door and smiled. Sunlight streamed into a room now full of targets and maps, and was that a miniature catapult waiting in the corner?

Harry himself was trying to bother the figurine of the Hungarian Horntail he'd once fought out of the small shoebox and into the terrarium he'd set up behind his desk. The Horntail, whom Harry had christened Albert, objected strenuously.

"I'm here to enforce a lunch break."

"Gin!" Harry called, face lighting up just before the small model dragon latched onto his hand. "Oh come on Albert!" Ginny hustled over and in record time the ever angry Albert was deposited where he belonged.

"There we are."

"What would I ever do without you?" Harry asked with a grin.

"Starve probably. Come on!"

It was nostalgic to walk these halls with Harry again, and when they spread a blanket out under a wide old elm by the lake she saw him smiling, light and simple and remembered why she had fallen in love with him.

Ginny waited for them to finish eating, for when Harry was wiggling fingers stained with summer strawberry juice at her face, to kiss his palm and hold it.

"Harry you've known me for about ten years. That's half my life."

"Ginny?"

"And you've been so stupidly self sacrificing all this time. So I want to ask you to be a bit selfish," She breathed out once and looked him right in his wide green eyes. "I want to be selfish with you." She had fumbled in the pocket of her robes and held up the simple gold band, a tiny snitch engraved on it. "I want to be selfish and have you in my life for the rest of it too. Please Harry?" Ginny hardly had a moment to breathe before she was crushed to his chest with a great sobbing laugh and the word "yes" breathed into her hair over and over.

When the tears and laughter and the urge to kiss each other and never stop lessened somewhat Harry reached into a pocket of his robes. He pulled out a rather more ornate ring, with delicate carved vines and a single bright diamond at the top.

"It never seemed like the right time." He whispered as he slid it onto her finger. "I wanted it to be perfect."

"I think," Ginny said, breathless and light in a way she hadn't anticipated when their rings caught the light together, "this is perfect enough."


End file.
